Odds and Ends
by Lady Jackdaw
Summary: A collection of ficlets written in response to a tumblr meme; rating may change. Eight: In this landscape of endless ice and snow, every flicker of warmth is to be cherished.
1. Chapter 1

This is a collection of (unrelated) ficlets, for the tumblr writing prompt: 1) Give me a pairing; 2) Give me a setting; 3) I will write you a three-sentence fic. So far, these are all Fakiru-based; I already have a few in my cache, so I'll probably be posting one a week, or so. I've decided to pretty these up a just bit, but for the most part they're unchanged. Hope you enjoy!

Prompt, from ballerina-duck/Snow Bunny/arctic_hare: Fakiru, pick a historical era of your choice.

Old West!Fakiru it is~!

_Princess Tutu is the property and copyright of Ikuko Itoh and Hal Film Maker; this fanwork makes no claims of ownership to said property and is not intended for sale or profit or commercial reproduction._

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"So where are we gonna go next, I hope it's fun, I've never just _gone _off like this before, it's a little scary but also kind of exciting," Ahiru babbled as she clung to Fakir, still unused to the rhythm of the horse.

Fakir grunted a bit and pulled his stetson further down over his eyes, hoping to hide the unbecoming flush her unrestrained affection and general bubbliness seemed to be bringing to his face more often these days.

He still didn't quite know _how _he'd ended up with this dance hall waif as his partner—she hated violence, and even when she'd tried to prove to him she could handle a gun the recoil and the surprise of it had knocked her clean off her feet—but he supposed, as he felt her arms tighten around his torso at a particular jolt and her lips curve in a giddy smile against his back, there were far worse partners in the world.


	2. Chapter 2

Prompt, from ballerina-duck/Snow Bunny/arctic_hare: Fakiru meeting as kids.

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Reaching the old oak tree (located not so coincidentally as far away from the noisy mob of his shrieking peers as possible) Fakir plopped down with a sigh of satisfaction, glad to be rid of their company, and cracked open a precociously thick book; at last, he could indulge in some time to himself.

Or he would have, had a small, bright red-orange mass of sticklike limbs and freckles—a girl, he realized after his initial shock, and not much younger than his own eight years despite her tininess—not fallen from the heights of the tree directly into his lap the very next moment.

He was stunned, then he was angry, then he was ordering her to leave…but then there was the guileless flash of her smile (which _did not _make him think her face was pretty and open as a sunflower) and the innocent request which sent sparkles into her clear blue eyes (and he _did not _decide right then and there that he always wanted to see her eyes sparkle like that), and Fakir was suddenly sitting back down with the girl beneath the tree and reading aloud from his book to her, the first moment of many they would cherish for the rest of their years together.


	3. Chapter 3

Prompt, from ballerina-duck/Snow Bunny/arctic_hare: Fakiru, in a fairy tale of your

choice.

This isn't really _based _on a fairy tale, per se, but it's certainly _inspired _by The Little Mermaid.

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Fakir couldn't say exactly when he had decided he wanted to give up the form he was born into in order to follow the human girl with hair like maple leaves in autumn into her world—time passed very differently for a tree, after all, perceptions trickling in slowly, like water through roots, experiences often layering one over another rather than laying themselves out in a neat sequence—but it must have been very early on after she started visiting him, because he took the first chance he got without a second thought.

He'd underestimated the difficulties, of course, first with walking (and what strange, awkward roots he had to balance on), then with speaking (he still didn't quite understand how that was supposed to work, unfamiliar as he was with the process of making vocal cords vibrate, and even now when he tried he mostly just produced a vague susurrous, not unlike wind as it had once blown through his leaves).

But the girl—_Ahiru, _humans had names, like he did now—still walked and danced with him despite his new roots, and she seemed to always understand what he meant without having to hear a word of it in her own language, and every time their boughs—_arms_—brushed or their twigs—_fingers_—tangled together, Fakir knew he had made the right decision.


	4. Chapter 4

Prompt, from ballerina-duck/Snow Bunny/arctic_hare: Fakiru in Meiji-era Japan.

This is what a collision between my very first fandom and my favorite fandom looks like, apparently.

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Ahiru couldn't contain the squeal of excitement that pealed out of her as she finally saw Fakir-san make his way though the crowd of disembarking boat passengers.

Mytho-sama and his lovely wife have been taking excellent care of her, and she could hardly wait to demonstrate how far her German had come under their tutelage—in fact, she didn't wait at all, rattling off every greeting she could think of as she bounded up to him, barely pausing to breathe as she launched immediately into vivid descriptions of all the local goings-on.

Fakir, too happy to see her again to be irritated by her chatter, offered her his arm in a rare show of gallantry (feeling quite pleased when she took it without a moment's hesitation), slowing and shortening his stride to accommodate her short legs and kimono—and nearly tripping over himself when she blithely mentioned all the strange explosions and swordfights that seemed to pop up with alarming frequency in a specific residential area of the city, too shocked to answer her laughing question about whether he thought she and the man who was usually at the center of it all (a red-haired man, maybe of oddly-placed foreign stock like her, according to gossip) could possibly be related.


	5. Chapter 5

Prompt, from ballerina-duck/Snow Bunny/arctic_hare: Regency-era Fakiru.

Despite being an avid historian (it's what I got my BA in, after all), I don't actually know that much about the Regency era. So, hopefully you like slapdashedly researched pseudo-historical fiction ^^;

Also: remember when I said this would be a once-a-week update schedule? Well, make that every three or four days, now (I ended up with more of these than I though I would ^^;)

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A few years ago, if anyone had told Fakir he would be skulking off in the night with the twiggy, awkward ward of his old governess, he would have accused them of drunkenness or insanity, or both, as he was hardly the type to harbor the spontaneity necessary for an anvil wedding.

Even Ahiru, after her initial euphoria, had been unable to smother all of her worries—namely, what would become of Fakir himself now that he was throwing away all convention and respectability for a union with a parentless, peerage-less, penniless girl like her.

As the carriage rattled its way over the last leg of their journey towards the tiny Scottish village, their hands found each other and twined together, and between one moment and the next any fears lingering in their hearts evaporated; they were together, they would face whatever was to come _together, _and that was more than enough.


	6. Chapter 6

Prompt, from ballerina-duck/Snow Bunny/arctic_hare: Transplant Fakiru to the fictional world of your choice.

So there's this podcast (whence I took this chapter summary) called "Welcome to Night Vale." _Go listen to it now. _It's creepy and hilarious and just plain wonderful, and I absolutely adore it and highly recommend you check it out if you haven't already! But it is pretty weird, so this is kind of weird, too; no real spoilers for the show, but possible confusion ahead.

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There were times when the sense they'd forgotten _something, _or many somethings, weighed on them as oppressive and inescapable as the noontime desert heat—when the trees whispered; when Fakir found himself overly skittish around the hooded figures; when they discovered the Faceless Old Woman who secretly lived in their house had changed another one of their books; when either of them violated the ban and picked up a pen; when they realized they spoke German, like always, when at home, but unconsciously and unaccountably switched to English (perfect and unaccented) the moment they crossed the threshold.

They remembered Ahiru had once been a duck (but where would there be a duck in the desert?) and that the stories Fakir wrote with his exorbitantly illegal pens sometimes came true (and would The Scientist just find _that _a quantum marvel worth salivating over), and all of that they would have shrugged off as typical Night Vale…Night Vale-ness were it not for those times they found themselves wondering _when _they had learned to handle weapons as well as everyone else in town when they could recall no childhood training, or _how long _exactly they had called the little desert community home.

But time had no meaning anymore, not here, and the smooth, sonorous voice on the radio assured them that sometimes it was better, safer, to simply forget, and so they did; if they had to guess, they would have probably just chalked most of it up to the angels, anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

Prompt, from nanenna: Fakiru superheroes.

This isn't even close to anything I'd usually do, but it actually turned out to be pretty fun! ^_^

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"This might be the _stupidest, _most _reckless, _sorriest excuse for a plan you've ever dragged me into," Fakir grumbles as he peers over the edge of the tall (tall, tall, _very _tall—he _is not _scared of heights, damn it!) building, wondering why he ever let himself be coerced into leaving Goldkrone in the first place.

Ahiru pouts at him—_Ah, yes, that's why_—before launching into one of her rambling speeches about using his powers for good, and how she couldn't just stop helping people after being Princess Tutu, and since she can turn into a duck at will now she's in a perfect position to sneak up on any bad guys, who of course would never suspect a small waterfowl of being any kind of threat…Fakir tunes most of it out, having heard the whole bit more than enough times, only raising an eyebrow when she spouts something about liking the way the short cape and simple black mask looks on him (a repurposed Romeo costume, another one of her "brilliant" ideas).

But there's no stopping the little fool when she put her mind to something this earnestly, so with a resigned sigh of "Just don't get yourself shot, moron," Fakir takes up his pen and pad, ready to guide Ahiru through the first skirmish in her battle against injustice.


	8. Chapter 8

Prompt, from ballerina-duck/Snow Bunny/arctic_hare: Fakiru in the Worlds of Chrestmanci (Diana Wynne Jones), Ice Age world-series.

If you haven't read Snow Bunny's absolutely delightful Princess Tutu/Chrestomanci crossover multi-chapter fic (and slew of related ficlets), I highly suggest you haul ass over to either tumblr or AO3 and so immediately! This has no relation to any of that, but you should still totally do it (no prior knowledge of the book series necessary)!

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The herds were moving again, and though they were only recently united in the ascetic marriage ceremony of their people, Fakir and Ahiru had little choice but to join the other members of their camp in following them; romance was a great deal less important than survival in this frozen world, and without the camp to look out for them they both knew they wouldn't last long.

Still, Ahiru couldn't help but be relieved when Fakir ducked inside their smokey little hut carrying his share of the latest hunt—she never liked it when he was gone so long, not when anything could, and sometimes did, happen—and she immediately dropped the hides she was stitching together into a new coat in favor of leaping to her feet and throwing her arms around his neck.

Fakir held her back for a long moment, then shyly withdrew something from the pouch at his belt: strong, shining, pure-white swan feathers, six of them, to weave into her braid or use to embellish her simple clothes, a humble, after-the-fact consolation for the betrothal gift he'd never been able to present her with, so eager were they to be joined before the migration started…and then they were embracing with more than just arms and hands, and the rest of the night held no chill for them.


	9. Chapter 9

Prompt from ballerina-duck/Snow Bunny/arctic_hare: Tam Lin Fakiru

Chapter summary taken from the Ballad of Tam Lin.

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Ahiru couldn't pretend she wasn't scared as Fakir tore through transformations—lion, and wolf, and writhing things best not thought about, and things that seemed nothing but claws and teeth and malice-but she refused to let her grip around him slacken for even a moment; he had sworn he wouldn't hurt her, that not even his master could cast a spell strong enough to make him do _that_, and she trusted him to hold to his word, even if the small, primal node at the back of her brain was shrieking in mindless, wordless, instinctual terror.

His enchanted struggles became more violent, and before she had time to think about it Ahiru responded by pulling both of them earthwards, grounding her body against the dirt and drawing from its age and vastness the strength to keep her arms locked tight (she tried to remember how they had lain side by side not wholly unlike this not so very long ago, and many times before that; it was hardly new or unfamiliar, and they could pass the rest of their days like that if she could just _hold on_).

Then suddenly he was something else, something smaller and burning like a heart (_Now!_) and Ahiru rolled them both into the small spring just off the forest trail-and with a fizzle and a rush and a great stretch Fakir was Fakir again, arms strong and warm around her, mumbling something she couldn't make out, though she felt it rumbling through his chest as tears mingled with the spring water on her face and she lifted shaky hands to wrap a sopping cloak around his shoulders, kissing every inch of skin she could reach; if his now-former master said anything to either of them they took no notice, too absorbed with wiping tears from each other's faces and reveling in the knowledge that now they were free to spend the rest of their days, and beyond, together.


End file.
